08/11/2026
I went to Walmart the other morning for one thing. Oatmeal. That's it. I'm trying to change the way I eat, and breakfast has always been a problem for me. I take vitamins every morning, I don't like taking them on an empty stomach, and I've finally decided that a chocolate croissant probably shouldn't qualify as the nutritional foundation upon which I build the rest of my day.
So, oatmeal.
Simple.
Except Walmart puts the oatmeal in the cereal aisle.
This is like holding an AA meeting in a liquor store.
I turned the corner, and there they were. All my old friends. Tony the Tiger. Toucan Sam. Lucky the Leprechaun. Fred Flintstone. Snap, Crackle and Pop. These guys have known me longer than most of the people currently in my contact list.
I grew up with them. Millions of us did. They weren't selling us breakfast. They were entertaining us. They came into our homes every Saturday morning between cartoons and told us how much fun breakfast could be. Tony didn't tell me to examine the nutrition label. Tony told me it was GR-R-REAT! Toucan Sam didn't suggest I compare ingredients with what children were eating in France. He told me to follow my fu***ng nose. And Lucky? Lucky was being chased around by children trying to steal his marshmallows.
In retrospect, there were warning signs.
But here's where my silly trip through Walmart becomes considerably less silly.
The cigarette people got into the food business.
For decades, major to***co corporations owned enormous pieces of the American food industry. Philip Morris acquired General Foods and later Kraft. R.J. Reynolds acquired Nabisco. Researchers at the University of Kansas have since studied foods sold by to***co-owned companies from 1988 through 2001. They found to***co-owned foods were 29% more likely to qualify as fat-and-sodium hyper-palatable and 80% more likely to qualify as carbohydrate-and-sodium hyper-palatable than foods not owned by to***co companies.
Now, I want to be fair. That research does not prove that some to***co executive sat behind a giant mahogany desk, stroked a white cat and said, “Gentlemen, ci******es are getting complicated. Bring me the Pop-Tarts.” The researchers themselves say their data cannot establish intent.
But they can establish something I find fascinating: companies that became extraordinarily sophisticated at developing and marketing ci******es also became deeply involved in developing and marketing America's processed foods. More recent research from the same university describes to***co companies applying marketing, distribution and product-engineering expertise from their to***co businesses to food.
That deserves our attention.
Especially when you consider that these products weren't marketed by a stern-looking nutritionist named Margaret.
They were marketed by a tiger, a toucan, a leprechaun and a caveman.
To children.
Including me.
Then I found out Toucan Sam has a French cousin.
Here's something else that blew my mind. Froot Loops sold in America and Froot Loops sold in France aren't formulated identically. The current American ingredient list includes Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1 and Yellow 6. Go look at Kellogg's French Froot Loops page and the French ingredient list describes color coming from carrot and blackcurrant concentrates and carotenoids
Apparently Toucan Sam needed a passport and an ingredient makeover before crossing the Atlantic.
And that's the kind of thing I want to understand better. I'm deliberately not saying, “Everything allowed in America is poison and everything Europeans eat was harvested this morning by monks.” That's nonsense. I'm also not saying you eat one bowl of Froot Loops and somebody should start measuring you for a coffin. I ate this stuff for decades.
I'm still here.
What I am asking is a much simpler question:
Why are we comfortable making the same recognizable food differently depending upon where it's being sold?
And why did I make it through most of my life without ever thinking to ask?
So I bought the oatmeal.
That's the great climax to this story. I didn't overthrow the food industry. I didn't organize a march through Walmart. I didn't tackle Tony the Tiger.
I bought a bag of oatmeal.
Yesterday morning, I made it. It was too milky. Today I tried again. Less liquid. Three minutes in the microwave. Stirred it around until it became the thick, sticky paste that oatmeal was apparently intended to become. Delicious. It reminded me of the oatmeal my grandmother used to make for my grandfather—the old-fashioned kind that could probably patch drywall.
I ate it. I took my vitamins. I was satisfied. And there wasn't a box of children's cereal anywhere in my house.
I'm not becoming a health fanatic. I'm not going to start wandering around supermarkets screaming MALTODEXTRIN! at strangers. I'm just paying attention. At 55 years old, I'm starting to realize that maybe some of the foods I've eaten my entire life deserve another look. Maybe “I've always eaten this” isn't a particularly compelling nutritional argument.
And maybe breakfast doesn't require a cartoon character.
So I've made my decision. Tony, Toucan Sam, Lucky, Fred, Snap, Crackle and Pop: we've had some wonderful years together. But I'm seeing other people now.
His name is Oatmeal.
He's incredibly boring. He doesn't have a television commercial. He doesn't have a catchphrase. He looks like wet cement.
And I absolutely love him.
As for the rest of you?
I've filed PFAs.
Please remain at least one cereal aisle away from me at all times.
Especially you, Lucky!
I know how you operate.
